A couple of months ago during one of these YouTube binges, I stumbled onto this channel. If you skipped the link, or didn't stick around very long once you clicked it, the Prank vs. Prank channel is run by a young couple from New Jersey, Jesse and Jeana, who have gained a following in the YouTube community by filming themselves--you guessed it--playing pranks on each other.
The pranks range in severity from him rigging a snow blower to blow toilet paper at the victim when she walks through the front door to her making him believe she's pregnant for an entire month. The pranks aren't important and are really only entertaining to a point--a sentiment that should assure my wife that there's no need to worry about me copy-catting them.
What really caught my attention about the Prank vs. Prank couple was their secondary channel, called BFvsGF. This channel has little to do with pranking (though some of it will leak in from time to time) and has everything to do with the couple's every day lives. Granted, their lives are a bit more interesting than most others. There are many videos documenting trips to Los Angeles for movie premieres or Google functions, and the regular attendance at Philadelphia 76ers games. But there are also plenty of videos showing their trips to the grocery store or their evenings spent having dinner with friends.
At this point, you're well within your rights to wonder why anyone would waste their time watching other people live their lives. I can think of a couple of reasons--our "reality TV" culture and the general rise of people watching as a hobby being among them.
The real question is, why would anyone want to live their lives so publicly? The answer, I realized after watching nearly every one of Jesse and Jeana's 600 videos, is documentation.
We all do it, or at least we all try to do it as much as possible. Ten years ago, we took pictures and put them in photo albums. We shot home movies and let them gather dust in a closet somewhere. We might save ticket stubs or collect other souvenirs to commemorate a moment in our lives.
These two, and so many others like them, have just taken that practice into the 21st century. Instead of photo albums and home movies, they use Facebook and YouTube to do what we have always done: Preserve the memories of things we never want to forget, or may one day want to recall.
Whether I knew it or not, I was inspired by these two on New Year's Eve when I took my Flip camera along as I particpated in a 5K walk with my wife. Some of you may have already seen this video, but if not, here it is:
It's no LA movie premiere, but it was damn fun. I don't know how much more video documentation I'll do in the future, but I can see it being a fair amount. My wife and I attend numerous sporting events in the area, travel a bit, and I think we've both kind of decided to try to do new and different things that allow us to get out of our normal routine in the coming year. I can see this blog and my YouTube channel being the perfect place to document it all so we have a place to look back and remember it.
Watch this space. You never know what you might see.
Until next time...
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